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Fizz Facts

Where is the Champagne region?

The Champagne grapes

So how is it made?

Types of Champagne

The label

Chilling, serving and tasting (or just chill and enjoy!)

The biology bit…

Champagne starts in Dover -well the all important chalk plain on which the region lies does anyway! Champagne itself lies 90 miles north east of Paris.

There are 319 villages in the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC)  and only sparkling wines carrying the AOC label can call themselves champagne.

In 2008 another 38 villages were added by the National Institute on Origin and Quality. However, the Champagne from the new villages won’t be ready for a few years yet!

Villages are either classified as grand cru, premier cru or appellation depending on the quality of their grapes. You’ll be pleased to know we offer a Grand Cru champagne from Manuel Janisson whose Champagne House is in Verzenay-  a Grand Cru Village! In addition, we bring you champagnes from Jean Paul Morel who is also in Verzenay. The Champagnes Hoses of G. Tribaut, Forget-Chemin and Forget-Brimont lie in Premier Cru villages and produce some fantastic champagnes.

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Grape varieties

Only 3 grape varieties can be used to make champagne:

Chardonnay, Pinot Noir & Pinot Meunier.

Any combination can be used, but quite often a champagne might comprise only one or two of the varieties. For example a Blanc de Noir is 100% Pinot Noir while a Blanc de Blanc is made solely from Chardonnay.

• Chardonnay grapes add finesse and elegance to the champagne and give flavours of apples and citrus notes. With age Chardonnay grapes add a creaminess and nuttiness on the palate along with floral notes.
• Pinot Noir is evocative of fruit such as raspberries, black cherries and even currants but it can produce a wide range of bouquets which can be quite confusing at times! It is lighter in structure than Pinot Meunier.
• Pinot Meunier adds spice to the equation and fruitiness. It is slightly more acidic than the other two grape varieties but is comparable in sugar levels. It is becoming increasingly popular amongst producers because of the richness and  body it gives to the champagne. Pinot Meunier isn’t usually noted for its ageing potential (although there is a growing debate about this) so at present it is most often found in champagnes that are intended to be drunk young. (There is a notable exception however in the prestige cuvées from Krug).

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Harvest

Grapes are harvested by hand to ensure that none of the pigment from the skin leaches into the white juice, and it also means any grapes with mildew or those that are too ripe and therefore too sweet will be eliminated.

Pressing is done immediately but gently; the grapes are crushed with their stems intact as these provide a series of natural conduits for the grape juice to run along rapidly thus preventing the juice being discoloured by the skins.

First Fermentation

When it has been pressed the ‘wine’ is stored in large stainless steel vats or in oak barrels for the first fermentation to take place. There is no law on how long the first fermentation must be, this is down to individual house preferences. The picture shows the tanks at Janisson et Fils.

Assemblage

This is usually a springtime activity, following the harvest the previous autumn. A great deal of skill, knowledge and experience is required to get the blends just right. For a non vintage champagne, wines from the most recent harvest are mixed with some reserve wines from past harvests and decisions are made on which percentages of each grape variety to use (if any).

Sometimes in the larger houses up to 70 base wines will go into a cuvée. Our little growers add fewer as they don’t have vast number of tanks to store all the reserve wines!

The second fermentation -prise de mousse or capturing the sparkle!

This is the part of the process where the bubbles develop. Once the chef de caves is content with the cuvee he has blended, a ‘liqueur de tirage’ is added. This is where chemistry and physics come in handy! In order for the champagne to reach the standard 6 atmospheres of pressure in the bottle 18g sugar and 0.3g yeast is added. The wines are then bottled and sealed with a tight but temporary metal cap known as a crown. They are then stored horizontally for at least 15 months- this is called” being on the lees”.  As you sit and read this the wines from this year’s harvest 2009 will be quietly sitting fermenting away and won’t be on sale until mid 2011.

Remuage

Once the champagne has fermented for the required time the yeast sediment has to be removed. The process for this is ‘remuage’.  During remuage the bottles are transferred onto either pupitres or gyro palettes. They are positioned neck down at a forty five degree angle. Every day the bottle is slightly shaken twisted and tipped nearer to vertical. Those houses that use pupitres for remuage employ Tourniers who turn the bottle a precise amount each day. Gyropalettes complete the process automatically in eight days compared to the eight weeks it takes with the pupitres system. G Tribaut in Hautvillers still use pupitres and turn their bottles by hand.

Disgorgement

At the end of remuage the sediment will have collected at the neck of the bottle and has to be removed (with minimal loss of wine and bubbles!). Today the neck of the bottle is frozen, the metal bottle cap is mechanically removed and the pressure inside the bottle ejects the sediment. This is fascinating to observe on the production line as every few seconds there is a little ‘pop’ heard above the sound of the machinery.

Liqueur d’expedition or dosage

In order to replace what has been lost when the sediment was removed the bottles are topped back up with  liqueur d’expedition  which normally includes some sugar to counteract the acidity of the wine. However our Brut Intégral from the House of Ellner has no sugar added at this point just more reserve wine to replace the small amount of champagne lost. Young wines will generally require more sugar to counteract the acidity than a vintage that has been on the lees for at least 3 years and therefore mellowed. The bottles are then corked, a metal cap is placed on top of the cork and then the cork is secured to the bottle with a wire. The ‘collar’ and labels are then added. Then it is sent all round the world to spread happiness and joy!!

Styles of champagne

The style of the champagne depends on how much dosage or liqueur d’expedition is added in the final stages of production. This liquid contains varying levels of sugar syrup, mixed with some reserve wine.

There are 6 styles of champagne, Extra Brut, Brut, Extra sec, Sec, Demi Sec and Douz.

Brut is by far the most common, and ranges from very dry to dry. A wine maker is allowed to add between 0 and 15 grams of sugar a litre to a Brut champagne. Occassionally the grapes from a particular harvest will contain quite a lot of sugar, meaning the dosage is made up entirely of reserve wine and no sugar is added, but this is quite rare. If you like a dry champagne check out the wonderfully fruity and floral, Brut Intégral from the House of Ellner.

Demi Sec is a type that some houses produce and contains anywhere between 33-50 grams of sugar per litre, so it is very sweet but it’s a good dessert champagne.

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Types of champagne

Non Vintage

Non vintage might sound a bit second rate but it’s actually the most classic type of champagne. The non vintage blend is always based on wines from the current harvest but can include up to 50% of reserve wines from past harvests, as this helps to ensure a consistent House style. Many NV Champagnes are a blend of thirty or forty different wines.

Although a non-vintage Champagne can be sold once it has been aged on the lees for 15 months, most houses prefer to age the wine in their cellars for longer periods. An NV wine will often improve in the bottle after purchase, if stored correctly. Ageing tends to soften the Champagne and increase its richness. However, it is not recommended to keep Champagne longer than it was originally cellared by the maker.

Vintage

Vintage Champagne is a blend of wines from one particular, stated year only, when the quality of the harvest was sufficient to declare a “Vintage”. Individual houses themselves declare whether or not their champagne qualifies for vintage status. A vintage champagne is often quite flowery and fresh because of the absence of reserve wines and will only become biscuity or toasty if stored for about 8-10 years from the date of harvest. (ie the date on the bottle).

Vintage Champagne must be 39 months old before it is sold, i.e. 3 years after the 1st January following the harvest the September of the year before.  For example our Roger Legros vintage 2002 was from the harvest of 2002 but could not be sold until 1st January 2006 at the earliest. As with non vintage champagnes, many houses will age their wines for longer than this legal minimum.

Rosé

There are two different ways to produce Rosé Champagne. The first is using the maceration process, whereby the skins and juice of the grapes are macerated to extract the pigment to give the champagne the pink shade. The other process simply involves adding a small proportion of red wine from the Champagne region to give the wine a rose tint. The wine used most often is Bouzy Rouge from the village of Bouzy! There is a great deal of discussion and also snobbery about which method produces the best Rose but apparently when blind tasting it is notoriously difficult to distinguish which method has actually been used!

Prestige Cuvées

A cuvee used to mean wine from one cuve or vat but nowadays refers to a precise blend or product that can be a blend of several vats.

In a vintage year many Champagne houses produce a special bottle and these are normally deemed to be Prestige or Deluxe cuvées. Prestige cuvees are epitomised by the champagnes, Dom Perignon, Roederer Cristal and Belle Epoque.

Prestige cuvées represent the pinnacle of a house’s achievement or arguably the chef du caves whose task it is to blend it in the first place. The prestige cuvee exaggerates the house style or the winemakers philosophy, but the downside is that this can lead to an over refined champagne, lacking in vibrancy.

They are made in small quantities and therefore inevitably they cost around three times more than a Non-Vintage, and around double the price of a Vintage!

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The label

The word ‘Champagne’ will have a prominent position on the label, as will the name or type of the champagne ie Vintage, or Milléseme or Brut.  The house and the region where it was produced will also be featured.

The percentage of alcohol has to be declared and that it contains sulphites.

The size of the bottle is shown – ie 75cl for a standard bottle.

If there is a year on the label it is a vintage champagne.

Finally the registration code ie NM-***-***

The most common code letters you will see on the label are either:

NM Négociant-Manipulant this is a champagne house which buys grapes in from growers in order to make their champagne they often have a producing capacity of their own also; such as Ellner and Forget Brimont.

RM stands for Récoltant-Manipulant  this is a grower (or house) who grows his own grapes to make his own champagne. He might also sell some of his grapes or buy some in to extend his harvest. Houses such as Legros and Forget-Chemin are Recoltant-Manipulant.

CM is Coopérative- Manipulant this is a group of growers who make and sell champagne under their own labels

MA is an abbreviation for Marque d’Acheteur which is a buyer’s own brand, this is a label name owned by a supermarket or wine merchant and will be made for them by one of the above.

Many of the champagnes you will find on this site are Récoltant-Manipulant because our growers use their own grapes grown and tended by their own fair hands!

Chilling and serving

You are aiming to serve champagne between 6-8 degrees centigrade – this is the optimum temperature to appreciate the aromas and flavours. So either store your fizz in a fridge for 3-4 hours beforehand (but not much longer as it will become too cold) or place it in an ice bucket- filled with half ice and half water- for about half an hour. Apparently in blind tastings it is not possible to determine a champagne or sparkling wine chilled in the freezer but the growers we work with view this as a horrifying way to chill the champagne! If you do, don’t forget about it!

The sound of the cork popping is the quintessential sound of champagne-  BUT!! Drinker be warned doing this lets a lot of the gas out and potentially some of your precious champagne. Those in the know recommend trying to produce a quiet sigh when removing the cork to save those precious bubbles.
To do this try holding the cork and gently turning the bottle. Holding the bottle away from you and also any  innocent bystsanders! As you feel the cork coming out push it back towards the bottle and tilt it to one side so that only a little gas escapes through a small opening between the cork and the bottle. The champagne cork under pressure can make a lethal if glamourous weapon, as the average bottle contains pressure equivalent to that in the tyre of a double-decker bus.

Long stemmed flutes or tulip shaped glasses are best as they capture the aromas in the top third of the glass.  If you really want to get the optimum aromas from the champagne only fill the glass a maximum of two thirds full so all those lovely aromas are captured in the top third.  Also try to hold the glass by its stem so that your hand doesn’t warm the contents.

Take a large sip and try to draw some air over the liquid in your mouth (it’s good to slurp!!). Swirl right round your mouth.

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Different parts of the tongue pick up different components taste.

Sweetness is detected at the front of the tongue, acidity and saltiness at the sides and bitterness at the back. A perfectly balanced bottle of fizz should not draw your attention to any one part of the tongue in particular. It should deliver a constant taste and sensation right across your palate.

The fizz should taste clean. Also, consider the mousse. A strong mousse will be quite fizzy and almost prickly on your tongue whereas a soft mousse will have bubbles that are more gentle on your palate.  The bubbles actually agitate the oral membranes- hence making champagne & sparkling wine in general a good aperitif.
Once you have swallowed the champagne there should be a degree of aftertaste. A great champagne is one which leaves a distinctive after taste and lingers on the palate.

Enjoy!!

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